When the WNBA’s commissioner labels your metropolis “an epicenter of ladies’s sports activities,” there’s stress to play to that normal.
Final week, throughout The Epicenter Ladies’s International Sports activities Summit, RAJ Sports activities normal supervisor Karina LeBlanc put within the legwork to point out manufacturers, followers, media, and the world at massive what Portland, Oregon, needed to supply all ranges of ladies’s sports activities. Led by siblings Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage, RAJ Sports activities initially shaped when it took possession of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings in 2013, coming into the Portland market in January 2024 when it purchased the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League’s Portland Thorns for $63 million.
In September, RAJ Sports activities was awarded a WNBA enlargement franchise for a $125 million price, and, in the course of the announcement at Portland’s Moda Middle, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert remarked that it “has grow to be an epicenter of ladies’s sports activities, and the individuals of Portland have established this metropolis as a premier vacation spot.”
A lot as RAJ Sports activities did after the Thorns buy—when it introduced in extra traders together with Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns co-owner Sam Garvin, former NFL quarterback Joey Harrington, and Olympic medalists Ashton and Brianne Theisen-Eaton—it approached the enterprise and sports activities communities and made the case for the Thorns, its newly named Portland Fireplace WNBA staff, and ladies’s sports activities infrastructure.
Teaming with Nike, the NWSL, and the WNBA, RAJ Sports activities expanded on its “Thorns For All” neighborhood platform and held a neighborhood day on the Thorns’ Windfall Park residence stadium that permit native companies and organizations line the concourse, all whereas matches kicked off between the Thorns and Seattle Reign developmental academy groups and the Thorns and Japanese membership Urawa Pink Diamonds’ ladies’s staff.
In the meantime, the group additionally hosted a livestreamed fireplace chat with Fireplace interim president Clare Hamill and invited the perfect youth groups on this planet to Windfall Park for the Nike U15 International Premier Cup, simply earlier than a pleasant Thorns-Reign match.
The middle of the week’s occasions was an invitation-only Ladies’s Sports activities Innovation Summit held on the Tiger Woods Middle at Nike World Headquarters simply exterior of Portland. Amid 4 discussions centered on the worth of ladies’s sports activities management, funding, analysis, and athletes—that includes College of South Carolina coach Daybreak Staley, Nike CEO Elliott Hill, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden—RAJ Sports activities’ LeBlanc implored the group to assume critically, converse with one another throughout breaks, and left them with a name to motion after every session.
“Everytime you’re up on the stage, you may at all times see who’s paying consideration or not, and what was spectacular to me is that everyone was glued to the stage all through your complete day,” LeBlanc mentioned. “You’re CEOs the place it’s virtually unattainable to get them for a full day as a result of they should run a enterprise, however everybody was so , and the suggestions we bought was all people discovered one thing new.”
As panel moderator and ESPN/iHeart Ladies’s Sports activities journalist Sarah Spain identified, cities that grow to be the epicenters for ladies’s sports activities, even quickly, are inclined to put on the excellence prominently. For example, Basel modified its avenue crossing figures to ladies’s soccer gamers for this yr’s European Championship in Switzerland, and Indianapolis gave every WNBA staff its personal avenue indicators for WNBA All-Star Weekend.
Nonetheless, for Portland to assert the title year-round, it’ll want extra occasions just like the Epicenter summit, extra help for individuals within the room, extra consideration for youth applications, and investments just like the Thorns and Fireplace’s $150 million joint coaching facility—and extra followers for the vocal, partaking normal supervisor out entrance main the best way.
Veteran management
Karina LeBlanc represented Canada on the World Cup 5 instances as a goalkeeper, gained a bronze medal together with her nation on the 2012 Summer time Olympics, had knowledgeable sports activities profession spanning 14 years, and ended her taking part in days with a 2015 Ladies’s World Cup run in her residence nation.
Nevertheless it was the membership the place she performed only one season and 21 matches in 2013—the Portland Thorns—that left a long-lasting impression far past her 2-0 shutout to safe the membership’s first NWSL championship.
“One among my reminiscences from taking part in right here was saving penalty kicks, as a result of I used to be in that North Finish, and I felt the vitality of our metropolis,” LeBlanc mentioned. “Regardless of the place you go, you may get excessive attendance, nevertheless it’s so private to Portland.”
ADWEEK/Jason Notte
After serving as CONCACAF’s head of ladies’s soccer from 2018 by means of 2021, LeBlanc was provided the overall supervisor’s job with the Thorns final yr because the membership rebuilt from the NWSL abuse scandal. Throughout LeBlanc’s early tenure, the Thorns gained the NWSL Problem Cup, the Ladies’s Worldwide Champions Cup, and the NWSL Defend in 2021 earlier than successful the membership’s third NWSL title in 2022.
Additionally throughout that point, LeBlanc and her daughter, Paris, had begun strolling laps across the subject on the Thorns’ residence stadium, Windfall Park, after video games and greeting followers.
“The primary time I did that lap with my daughter at a Thorns recreation, I did that to thank the town for displaying up as a result of I wish to be sure that individuals perceive the significance of them even displaying up,” LeBlanc mentioned. “A few of it was my daughter: We moved right here from the Bahamas in the course of the pandemic, so she hadn’t been round as many individuals as most individuals would have thought, so this can be a metropolis that made me really feel like I belonged, and I needed her to really feel that approach.”
Final yr, after RAJ Sports activities bought the Thorns and acquired its WNBA franchise, LeBlanc was named the corporate’s GM and have become much more acquainted to sports activities followers in Portland. When the Portland Fireplace model was revived in July, she served as a de facto emcee for hundreds of followers exterior the Moda Middle as they lined up for merchandise, meals carts, and staff tattoos. On the Ladies’s Sports activities Innovation Summit, she hosted each the occasion and a panel with Olympic monitor and subject legend Carl Lewis, U.S. ladies’s soccer World Cup winner (and Portland resident) Shannon Boxx, and basketball Corridor of Fame inductee Sylvia Fowles—a dialogue she recorded for her soon-to-launch Epicenter of Ladies’s Sports activities Podcast.
LeBlanc famous that she returned to Portland as a result of it was a metropolis through which she felt she might at all times be herself, and she or he accepted the extra duties of a WNBA staff as a result of basketball was her past love, the place she “noticed ladies who appeared like me doing a sport at a excessive stage.” However her companion for these laps round Windfall Park remains to be her essential inspiration for being the face of Portland’s ladies’s sports activities empire.
“My why is my daughter. That is the place I’m elevating my daughter, and we at all times speak each day about ‘go be your individual hero,’ however I additionally know the way she seems at me, so each single day I wish to be her ‘shero,’” LeBlanc mentioned.
Metropolis of desires
Portland is a metropolis that seems for ladies’s sports activities. In the course of the Fireplace’s unique run from 2000 to 2002, it averaged greater than 8,000 followers per recreation. As just lately as 2023, the WNBA’s league common was under 6,660.
Final yr, the NWSL hit an all-time common attendance excessive of 11,250 followers per recreation. The Thorns exceeded that in LeBlanc’s one yr there as a participant (13,320 again in 2013) and are averaging greater than 17,000 per match this yr—together with a peak viewers of greater than 21,000 for Satisfaction Evening again in June.
The Fireplace declare greater than 12,500 season ticket reservations forward of their 2026 debut, whereas a ladies’s soccer metropolis that produced international stars Tiffeny Milbrett, Megan Rapinoe, and Christine Sinclair on the College of Portland will get able to welcome Sinclair again for a quantity retirement ceremony later this season. The LPGA Portland Traditional tees off its 54th installment later this month, whereas the NCAA brings its March Insanity ladies’s regionals to city in 2028 and its Ultimate 4 and Championship in 2030.
In a metropolis the place The Sports activities Bra not solely impressed dozens of bars devoted to ladies’s sports activities but in addition franchises in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Boston, and Las Vegas, it’s not unusual to see boys and males in Thorns jerseys and ladies’s sports activities bringing plenty of individuals collectively. As LeBlanc has found, these individuals swayed by her message and that of the Epicenter summit aren’t at all times typical sports activities followers, however neighbors who join by means of their children, the humanities, native meals, and different shared pursuits.
“The Bhathal household noticed this in me—I knew the GM and president function wasn’t the function that I beloved—however they noticed this chance for me and so they created this place for me to talk and be my genuine self as a result of that is what I’ve lived… that is who I’m,” LeBlanc mentioned.
